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Sure the galaxy is 13.1 billion years old now. But we are seeing it as it was when it was much less than 700 million years old. So, we're "seeing" a young galaxy, regardless of how long ago it was formed.

Serialized workflow is the enemy of scalabilty. I would do it in many circumstances because the benefits of the tool (Word in this case) outweigh the costs of the workflow it requires. But I wouldn't confuse that with consciously choosing a serialized workflow.

It many cases were a customer of mine has multi-user editing problems, I find that the root cause is that they store bits of information with different use patterns in the same document. Simply splitting the document often fixes the problem.

You are trying to shoehorn the process into one that works with the limitations of desktop document editing programs. Switching to collaborative editing solutions, or moving the data from documents to databases would likely bypass the need to restrict the process to one editor at a time. I'm not saying that either is a better solution than your suggestion, but I have shown that what you are suggesting is only one of many ways forward.

Git and SVN are different products. SVN is centralized and git is distributed. If you want to create a centralized repository and only allow people to have access to certain parts of it, SVN is a much better fit for that workflow. Neither allows the user to browse the document repository with first checking it out. Well, they both have web interfaces, but those don't support a good editing workflow.

Any time someone responds to a study with the general statement "They are wrong, I have an anecdote to prove it!" should be tagged and forever prohibited from participating in discussions or weighing in on decisions on the topic.

That's not the whole story. Unfortunately, very few vendors in the market see value in the old fashioned "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" philosophy. Instead, most have some strange profit angle that ends up reducing the utility of the stuff they sell. You see too many ad-ladened smart phone apps, subscription services, or good ole' vendor lock-in in the affordable stuff.

For example, I have a garage door opener that has automation features. Unfortunately, every time IOS or Android update, either me or my wife can't use the smart features for a few months. They have a halfway decent app, but it will never be integrated with anything else and they won't publish an API spec to allow me to use an alternative method of control. This is very short-sighted. Opening up an API won't make the geek money rain down on you tomorrow, but if a critical mass of vendors do it, the market will mature to the point where you can put something together out of cheap components.

That's because the only purpose of the question was to determine if you any semblance of programming skill. Such a simple test filters out 95% of candidates and leaves a lot of time to have real discussions with the other 5%.

Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out how to do what these other countries are already doing?

It took zero. We stopped building Nuclear plants before Chernobyl (29 deaths) or Fukushima (1 death) happened. Now that we had one due to old tech and misuse and one due to neglect and a huge earthquake, it's still the wrong thing to do.

Should you fire the person that is likely legally bound to make a very nonsensical call?

That's an idea. It would certainly speed up the process of getting these policies reviewed and revised and fix the "sorry my hands are tied" attitudes that people making sense keep getting stonewalled with.

I too am a parent. I am much more afraid that my child will be harmed by a friend or by her own choices than by a stranger shooting up a school or a by drug dealer. These zero tolerance policies don't address any fear I have. The links you provided don't represent anything I'm afraid of.

Bad things have always happened. Bad things will continue to happen no matter how much you try to control them. The idea that you will only accept a situation after you have wrung the very last ounce of risk out of it is pretty much the definition of cowardice. Bravery would be doing something despite great risk - I'm not advocating that. Rather, sending your kids to school when there is a statistically low chance of harm is simply the sensible thing to do.

OK, so I guess I'm wrong, the NFL has no experience with inflating footballs. There are multiple balls inflated for each of the many games each week throughout the season and this has been going on for quite a few years, but they still don't really know anything about inflated leather balls. Right.

They asked for the help, that's the point of the article. If they were confident in their conclusions, this thread wouldn't exist in its current form. I am not making some wild assumption that they don't know what they are doing - the NFL asked for help.

I realized that they probably only asked for help because they wanted to get a response from someone with an un-assailable reputation, not because they are buffoons. But, it still happened, and pointing out that they know what they are doing does not advance the conversation.

There is about 1/10th of a pound of air in an inflated ball. If it were pumped to 100psi you could tell the difference, but you would need balls with very consistent tare weights and a really good scale to notice a few psi in the weight.